Why did Elon Musk just say Trump wants to bring two stranded astronauts home?
For reasons that were not immediately clear, SpaceX founder Elon Musk took to his social media site X on Tuesday evening to make a perplexing space-based pronouncement.
"The POTUS has asked SpaceX to bring home the 2 astronauts stranded on the Space_Station as soon as possible. We will do so," Musk wrote. "Terrible that the Biden administration left them there so long."
Now generally, at Ars Technica, it is not our policy to write stories strictly based on things Elon Musk says on X. However, this statement was so declarative, and so consternation-inducing for NASA, it bears a bit of explication.
lmao bullshit, Ars loves to sneed about everything Elon does; it's basically TMZ but only covering Elon.
Foremost, NASA has gone to great lengths to stress that the two astronauts referenced hereโButch Wilmore and Suni Williamsโare not stranded on the International Space Station.
The astronauts are clearly stranded as has been covered extensively over the last year by even leftie organisations:
NPR also released an article insisting that the astronauts aren't stranded - https://www.npr.org/2025/01/28/nx-s1-5278636/iss-astronaut-rescue-spacex-trump:
Ars comments are of course mad:
Why wouldn't the US government want to bring two stranded astronauts home? Why is this the top comment? What are you mad about?
They were meant to be there for eight days. The eighteen month stay was planned.
And yet they're still stranded there, curious. Why don't they just fly back home? They must want to be there.
The bottom two comments - note the guy who's had an account for 17 years.
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If Biden had announced plans to rescue the two stranded astronauts Ars would be on their knees licking his taint.
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Their rescue vehicle literally launched in September last year.
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What happened to it?
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Still up there until NASA launches the next crew
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Oh so it's for emergencies?
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A bit of that, and a bit of 'why send this home empty'
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Oh so it's for economic reasons?
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Its a bit of Column A and a bit of Column B. Emergencies+don't send the expensive ride back empty.
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The amount of economic theory shit talking over here is amazing. Bravo.
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So which one is it?
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Biden forces Musk to begrugingly return brave astronauts held hostage by SpaceX
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For a bargain price!
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"Biden, not content with sending money overseas, now promises to spend billions on aid to outer space"
-chuds
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